"Mary, Queen of Scotland and France, to James Prior of the
Monasterie of S. Andrewes.

"I cannot, my Cousin, wonder enough, how you that are nighest us in bloud, and greatly benefitted by our liberality, as yourself knoweth, should be so presumptuous and wickedly disposed, as by one and the same fact to violate the Majesty of God and the authority belonging to me and my husband; for to me it is a wonder that you, who being with me did complain of the Duke of Chattellerault, and divers others for dismissing my authority, should now be the leader of a faction in matters of greatest weight, wherein not only the honour of God is touched, but my authority all utterly taken away: which I would have more easily believed of any other of my subjects than of you, for I had a speciall hope of your fidelity, and am not a little563 grieved that you should have deceived me; Though yet I can scarse be perswaded, that you are gone so far from truth and reason, as to be carried away with such blinde errours which I wish were not, as any in the world else, beseeching God to illuminate you with his light, that returning into the right way you may shew your self (by doing things contrary to that you have already performed) a good man, and obedient to our lawes; whereof by these letters I thought good to admonish you, and withall earnestly to intreat you to amend your by-gone faults, with better deeds in time coming; that the anger which I and my husband have conceived against you, may by that means be mitigated. Otherwise I would have you understand, that we will take such punishment of you, that you shall ever remember us, which shall be to me a most grievous thing. God I beseech to keep you from all danger.

Paris the 24. of July, 1559."